Google prints someone else's price on your hotel's photo
On six of the 11 independent hotels' Google Maps cards that showed the hotel's own rate, someone else sold the room for less, and Google prints the lowest price on the hotel's photo
by Markus Busch
Hotel Laimer Hof in Munich has what Friday's piece told hotels to get. Its own price is on its Google Maps card: CHF 61, linked to its own website. It still doesn't get the spot next to its name. On the photo at the top of the card, Google prints CHF 47 and a label: 45% below the usual price, great deal. That price is trivago DEALS.
6 of 11 hotels undercut on their own card. On Friday we reported that six of the 17 independents we checked had no price of their own on their Maps card. The other 11 did. On six of those 11, someone else showed a lower one. trivago DEALS at Hotel Torbräu in Munich, 181 against the hotel's 261. Vio.com at Hotel Rathaus Wein & Design in Vienna, 111 against 137. Hotels.com at Casa Oliver in Lisbon, 76 against 91, and Hotels.com bought the sponsored block on top. Klook at Marktgasse Hotel in Zurich. trivago at the Schweizerhof in Bern.
The lowest price wins the name. Google's help pages say the price shown for a property is "the lowest price provided across all partners." So connecting your feed puts your rate on the card. It does not put it next to your name. A reseller one franc cheaper takes that spot, whoever it is and whatever room it sells.
trivago was on 7 of 17 cards. Sometimes as an ad, sometimes as trivago DEALS, its own checkout, which sells rooms largely supplied by Expedia, as we have covered before. Its DEALS price was the lowest on the card at Torbräu and Laimer Hof, both of which had their own price on it.
HOTREC's distribution study, published in September, found that half of Europe's hotels say an OTA sells their rooms below their own rate, and most say they never agreed to it. On a Maps card, the guest sees the result before she sees your website.
The limits. Seventeen hotels, checked from one browser in Zurich, logged out, on October 9. Google picks the dates for each card, so they differ. The cheaper price may be for a different room: the trivago DEALS offer at Torbräu was for an economy double, and the hotel's 261 may not be. On one card, Hotel Adler in Zurich, the photo showed CHF 282 while the hotel's own 205 sat below it, which Google's rule doesn't explain.
On Monday. Search your hotel on Google Maps on a desktop. Write down the lowest price on the card and who sells it. If it isn't you, ask your channel manager and each OTA account manager which of them supplies that seller, and on which room. Then compare it with your own cheapest bookable rate for the same dates.
A connected feed gets your price onto the card. The cheapest seller of your room gets your name.
Read also: Google stopped filling in hotel rates on September 30. Here is what your card looks like now.
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